Grit Lab Report

Hi Emily,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 2: I have 2 or 3 emerging interests but am unsure how to figure out which one to pursue .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were benevolence, achievement, and hedonism.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.

You said your top three talents were social, verbal, and analytic.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to building resilience to change and adversity .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said change my sheets .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said feel comfy .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said laziness .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: when i do my laundry on wednesday, then i will change my sheets .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in exercise .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt embarrassed when receiving critical feedback, and embarrassed when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being job search .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .

In one word, you said it made you feel proud .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

Talent is malleable
flow is the extreme state of interest
personality is a habit of heart and mind
goals are a desired future state
Going up in the goal hierarchy is asking yourself why
Deliberate practice is unenjoyable, but flow is enjoyable
Feedback is information!
Stress can enhance your success
Changing your situation is everything!
role models provide information

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Alex Fisher
Dear Emily, I loved our time together this semester and as I reflect on the past year of our academic journey together, I can't help but express my sincere gratitude for the positive impact you've had on our shared experiences. Your presence in our discussions and group projects brings a unique and valuable perspective, making our learning environment more vibrant and enriching. Your thoughtful and considerate nature doesn't go unnoticed. Your dedication to our coursework and your genuine interest in the subject matter are evident in every interaction. I appreciate the way you approach challenges with a calm demeanor and a determination to understand and overcome them. Your contributions to our collaborative efforts, you demonstrate a wonderful balance of level-headedness and passion. Beyond our academic pursuits, your kindness and openness contribute significantly to the positive atmosphere we've cultivated. I'm grateful to have you as a classmate and look forward to more shared moments of learning and growth in the time to come. As for your discovery project, calligraphy, how cool! I loved hearing about the calligraphers you researched, especially El Seed, calligraffiti is such a cool concept. Hearing about your curiosity conversation with a self taught artist and hearing how you overcame setbacks was inspiring. I am so glad you will be continuing your artistic endeavor in calligraphy and would love for you to teach me sometimes. I am going to miss working with you very much but will see you in positive psychology! I can not wait to see what you do in this lifetime, I know it will be great. - Alex
Sophia Nehme
Emily's upbeat demeanor and willingness to share personal experiences really strengthened our group discussions. It was always fascinating to witness her form connections between real-life anecdotes and the concepts we discussed in class, which added depth and relatability to our conversations. For instance, I loved hearing about her experience in reading her heartfelt gratitude letter to her dad! It was not only heartwarming but also demonstrated her ability to connect course content with her life experiences seamlessly, which is particularly relevant given the structure of the course. Emily speaks with intentionality, and more often than not contributes in a meaningful way that adds a new layer or perspective to the topic at hand. Despite feeling like we had some knowledge of each other before Grit Lab, I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to get to know her better throughout the semester. Her presence and engagement were instrumental in our team dynamic. I found Emily's Discovery project particularly relatable, especially regarding her desire to revive her creative side. Though our chosen art forms could not be more different, I saw lots of parallels in what we gained from the project. I was really impressed with how she started entirely from scratch to develop a new skill set. She tackled it admirably, using deliberate practice, a testament to the dedication and effort she invested in the project. I also really appreciated her exploration of the rich history of calligraphy in addition to just practicing it as a craft. I walked away from her presentation being interested in the distinctions between East and West that she raised, and her consideration of calligraphy as both an art form and an educational tool. Her presentation shed light on facets of calligraphy that I hadn't previously considered, leaving me with a newfound appreciation and curiosity for it.
Lily Martin
Emily is an incredibly warm and kind person. Everytime I would walk into class, she would make sure to say hello and ask how I was doing. It was clear that she cared deeply about every member of our group. Emily was also a great listener. Emily and I were partners for many of the “pair and share” activities. She would always listen very attentively, making sure to ask a lot of follow up questions. During these conversations, I really appreciated how open Emily was. She was not afraid to share her personal experiences, which made me feel comfortable sharing my own stories too. Emily also had a very strong understanding of the class material, and she was able to help me any time I was confused in class. I feel very grateful that I was able to meet a person as kind and thoughtful as Emily! Emily’s Discovery Project was on calligraphy. I learned a lot from her presentation about the history of calligraphy. Specifically, Emily described how there has been debate over whether calligraphy is an art form or if it is more of an educational tool. I had never thought about this difference before, and I’m glad Emily drew attention to it in her presentation. Another thing that I really liked about Emily’s presentation was that she showed pictures of her very first attempts at calligraphy. There is a tendency for people to want to show only their finished work, so I really admired Emily’s vulnerability here. Perhaps my favorite part of Emily’s presentation was when she said “You are capable of starting from scratch”. I thought this was a really great insight and an important reminder. It is daunting to start a hobby that you have never done before, but Emily showed that it is possible. Overall, her presentation was amazing!

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.